


The Ivy That Survives The Winter

by LittleDesertFlower



Series: Adversity [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: A Slightly Less Long One But Still So, F/F, Family Reunions, One Shot, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, Slice of Life, Weddings, original worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 04:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower
Summary: It’s 1939 and Amestris is a warless land again. The Drachman forces and Briggs have made an allegiance, the north finally rests in peace, so what else is Olivier Armstrong waiting for to ask her question? The question that has plagued her since 1919, the question that she never thought she would ever want to ask.Requires knowledge of bothThe Flower That Blooms In AdversityandLandlocked and coastwise.
Relationships: Olivier Mira Armstrong/Original Character(s)
Series: Adversity [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1522487
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	The Ivy That Survives The Winter

Come winter and spring, Fort Briggs stood.

For the first time in Amestrian history, the truce with the north beyond the north did not take any damage with the years. Quite on the contrary, when the new Drachman leader came to power after the war had ended, she didn’t spare any expense in inviting the Amestrian government to the Drachman capital. When they declined, it fell to Olivier Armstrong and her team to travel the distance and ensure that, indeed, the truce hadn’t weakened in the slightest. Surprisingly enough, from then on it strengthened.

Via occasional letters, the iron lady that ruled over Drachma and Olivier, small ruler of her fort, became something akin to friends, aside from the convenience of maintaining good relations for the sake of the country Olivier was helping build. Some in Fort Briggs would, of course, one day grow to refer to the two leaders as ‘twins of a different womb’, but Olivier never gave them the satisfaction of commenting on that.

From time to time, she and Zinnia would cross the border into Drachman cities where they were received in castles and palaces and had banquets thrown in their honor. There would not be a trip that some people in both sides didn’t object to—the war was still recent, the pain too fresh in their minds to ever forget it—, but the hospitality remained there, polite and somewhat impersonal. When Olivier and Zinnia talked about visiting more often, Zinnia would inevitably always end up arguing that even though the architecture was much too exquisite and the people fairly nice to talk to in broken Drachman, the weather was rather unpleasant to endure for longer periods of time, especially the closer one got to the northern poles.

The two women had been spoiled, long enough ago, by the placid and warm beaches of Chalybes. Staying true to her promise, Olivier bought a house by the sea, away from the main town, with a small dock to keep their ship close. Every summer, when the last of the snow melted, they would travel south of Amestris into a land that would always feel theirs. It was there, always there, that the subject of marriage would come alive, like a butterfly breaking free of the chrysalid. Never given a real voice, the idea of getting married someday solidified slowly in Olivier’s mind. In the ways that made a marriage special, they were technically already married, living together in the same room, making joint decisions, openly displaying the affections that long ago had bound them closer. All they lacked was official confirmation. And would that change anything now?

Olivier’s mind refused to acknowledge she was even thinking about marriage that often (every summer), not just because she had grown used to their situation being as close to marriage it made no difference, but out of sheer practicality. Even if Drachma and Amestris were currently enjoying the longest lasting peace in history, that didn’t mean her job—_their _job—didn’t entail danger anymore. The north in itself was dangerous.

With time, Olivier stopped thinking about the notion of officializing something that didn’t need permission to be what it was, and the yearly vacations in Haling Cove no longer incited her to propose, à la romance novels. Any and all time spent there was sacrificed out of Olivier’s duty to revive the flames of their love, when Briggs had managed once again to blow smoke on them.

After all, life had to go on. Budgets, schedules that Olivier always expected on her desk earlier than anyone else could deliver them, provisions, patrols, negotiations. Every winter the fort would haul up, like in the olden days, and await something that was never coming. They still felt the ghosts of the war in their hearts, walking down their hallways. The fort’s cemetery had grown in size years ago, and these days few approached it. The losses of the past had often been forgotten, as more retirements came to be and new men and women joined the soldiers of Briggs. And with every new spring, Olivier and Zinnia would spend a few minutes there, in front of bodyless tombstones, and remember. But their memories, too, could not escape the thinness of age.

The last remains of the war thinned, too. Ishval became prosperous after the success of Mustang’s program, and the military became a force for good (and would eventually dismantle itself, since there was no need for armies when there was lasting peace), with generals retiring one after the other at ages much too young for Olivier’s taste.

A decade and a half after the war, she received news from Grumman himself. He was the only piece of the puzzle that remained where he was. A man now past the age of eighty, he had been constantly pushed to leave his job to someone younger and more prepared. All they had been able to get him to do was try harder, and Olivier often smiled reading the papers that came from Central. Grumman was a tough nut to crack.

When age mellowed him far more than he was prepared to deal with, he phoned her. No well-composed letters or official communications. The old man directly called her office and expressed a proposition that had probably been a few months or years in the making.

“I am no longer fit for this, Armstrong,” he said, voice wavering, thin and fading. “I haven’t been for many years, in fact. But I have been thinking… You’re the only one that still stands, after so long. The Northern Wall of Briggs and its Ice Queen…”

The nostalgia in his words made her remember that, indeed, that had always been her. Well before anyone had bothered finding out who hid under the ice.

“You were … the first to oppose what was poisoning us from within.”

She stopped him before he droned on about the past.

“That was a long time ago, Grumman. Things have changed.”

“Not where it matters,” he croaked. “You’ve always defended this country and its people. Even when it came at great cost to you.” He sighed, evoking old times she had never fared well in forgetting. “I’ve heard so many stories about you, Armstrong, sometimes it’s hard to remember which is true and which is folly. But that I always remember. Your broken arm and your bruises when we all convened to fix the world… Nobody else that was injured turned up, did you know that? Just you.”

Olivier could remember another name, but she did not say it. She served under Grumman, as she always had since he had come into power, and she would not be changing his point of view tonight. Just stating her own.

“And ever since you have been loyal. We only gave you a new rank, to content you, like a master throws a bone at his hound to chew while the rest of his dogs taste meat. But you stayed where you were supposed to be and in doing so established one of the greatest commercial and diplomatic relations in our history.” He coughed feebly. She could hear every rasping breath that came out of his lungs. “Amestris owes you a great deal, Olivier.”

It was the first time he had ever spoken her name. And it felt … different than what she’d expected. She knew where he wanted to go and she was prepared to reply instantly with her decision, but she definitely did not expect Grumman, of all people, getting honest with her about things that hadn’t mattered in almost twenty years.

“And that is why I perhaps should feel ashamed to ask you to continue to restore it in years to come, as I have always endeavored to do,” Grumman said slowly. “But I would trust nobody else with it. Amestris should be governed by those who love their nation, those who strive to perfect it, those who know what it means—what it takes, even—to save it.”

Olivier inhaled deeply. What he was asking, she had long ago wanted more than anything. To sit upon a throne she had earned with tears and sweat, to watch her subjects fear the woman they had always belittled. But that woman existed no more. Things _had _changed.

“I understand,” she said. “But I’m no more fit for it than you are.”

He began to protest. “Armstrong!”

“My place,” she said firmly, “is here. War or no war, I belong at Briggs.”

A Briggs that had transformed into a newer, more modern version of itself, and yet still the same Briggs she would always love, always give her life for. The heart of it had only grown warmer, the ties with her fellow soldiers tighter. With the wind that howled and came, promising blizzards and storm; the feel of her hard mattress in the night with the company of another woman by her side; the groaning pipes when the sun was still rising above them; and the mountains, coated in white or gray, a paradise unlike any other on this earth.

“Who will succeed me if you won’t?” Grumman asked.

“Mustang,” Olivier replied instantly. Any other name would have turned to ash in her mouth. “He, too, was there. He took Central Command down from the inside, risking far more than I ever did. He came to the meetings, after, with burns and wounds worse than mine. And all these years he has remained where you destined him, fixing the world one step at a time.”

“You would vouch for him?” Grumman said, confused. “I’d thought you hated each other.”

Olivier couldn’t help but smile. Long ago, perhaps, she had had it in her heart to hate.

“If it’s not me,” she said, “let it be him.”

_God knows it’s what he’s always wanted. Perhaps more than I ever did._ Years ago, this thought would have never crossed Olivier’s mind, and she was proud of herself for getting to a point where it was easier to admit that things had never been black or white, even if she’d fought hard to make them so.

After all, one could always see blue if one looked up.

Mustang contacted her himself a few days later, in a letter full of ramblings that didn’t become him, which concluded in a line that expressed no anger or resentment, just … plain old fraternity.

It read: _Why didn’t you take the job, Armstrong? You always wanted it._

It made her smile, because she was sure, then, that they’d both grown enough to understand that the other had wanted it too, and that now neither did. Still, it didn’t take long before she read on a paper about the inauguration of a new era in Amestris history, following with a long article depicting Roy Mustang’s life as having peaked now that he had been crowned co-president of the country with his lifelong partner Riza Hawkeye.

When she showed it to Zinnia, she cracked up and said:

“He’s going to spend the next few years at work while you and I get old somewhere!”

Meant as a joke as that was, Olivier’s thought processes froze for a moment. It was true, wasn’t it? Mustang would be bound to serve far more years than he must have planned, and Olivier would just … What? Retire, the way she’d always intended for all the soldiers in her fort? Wouldn’t she just be happier if she was allowed to live out the rest of her days as a general here? And if that was what she wanted, what did _Zinnia_ want?

Puzzled, Olivier asked her: “Is that … the plan?”

“The plan?”

“For the next few years.”

“I always thought—”

“You want to … retire?” Olivier asked more clearly now.

Zinnia nodded timidly.

Time had taught her—again and again, in case she dared forget—that Olivier’s idea of dying came hand-in-hand with battle. She hoped her end would come as she awaited it, fighting it till the last second. But … Amestris was currently at peace, Briggs was a fort that no longer needed to be all about defense. What war did Olivier want to die in now?

“Well, _I _can’t retire,” Zinnia said. “I’m not technically working. But _you _can.”

Olivier was, for the first time in a long time, close to speechless.

“Well, that’s still in the distant future, isn’t it?” she stammered. “We have time to think about it.”

A very good way to buy time was pretending there _was _time. And, as it tended to happen in her over-crowded head, with this to do and budgets to sign and people to feed, Olivier did not remember to give retirement another thought until her sixtieth birthday, almost ten years later.

* * *

Austin and Zinnia had been working towards it for months, notifying everyone (even the newbies who could hardly remember the name of their general and the woman by her side), sending letters to her family to see if any of them could skip out on the pleasantries of Central and visit for a few days, preparing food that the fort had not seen in ages.

They went all out because Olivier, nearing that dreaded round number, had gone all _in. _Melancholic, in a way, even. She still trained with ferocity and had arms and thighs that could crush heads, but where age had definitely softened her was at the heart. That heart that no longer wept thawed ice and had long ago learned to treasure the warm red blood that coursed through it. Buccaneer had been sixty, when she had started to take precautions. To keep him safe, to keep him alive. Because few soldiers reached his age. She’d found him a house near the fort, where he would always love to dwell, and he’d been, eventually, talked into moving out there.

He had never set a foot in that house. Olivier had had to sell it. After the war. After … coming back home to an empty and ransacked fort she had had to double her efforts to bring life back to.

And despite all the recklessness of her life, every day she had woken up and risked everything for her people, she’d made it to sixty, too. In one piece, with just a few scars to account for everything she’d done without caring about her own fate. And Buccaneer had been twenty-four years buried under the ground.

But Zinnia would have died rather than let her dwell on the unfairness of life for one more minute. Her sixty were not like his had been. Her sixty were a victory. A truce, a relationship, a community. And she had earned every month. Every day. To _hell _with letting her mull over death when she was still so full of life.

And so April 17th dawned, chilly for the time of the year, and Olivier woke up to something she had always—under her breath—mumbled about making. A little book, bound in dark leather, waiting for her on Zinnia’s lap.

She sat up on the mattress and pushed the thin graying hair away from her face.

“You shouldn’t have…”

“I did anyway.” Zinnia’s smile now was not like any of all the others. It was fuller, somehow. It contained something that she had been keeping secret, even from Austin. Something that perhaps would get Olivier’s mind off death and dying. “There’s… there’s a few ones there that I haven’t given to you yet.”

Olivier snorted softly. “Kept me in the dark, have you?”

“It wouldn’t have been a birthday surprise otherwise,” Zinnia said, getting up and handing Olivier the book as she sat by her side. Olivier eyed it curiously for a few seconds, then began to turn the pages.

She recognized almost all of them. The pieces of writing that Zinnia had sold her, defiantly, in a way buying her own right to occupy space in Iver. About power and authority, but also about the things Zinnia had always been quick to realize about her without Olivier knowing.

Some others … dated from back then, too. The ink had lost color, and the paper was yellow and stiff. But the handwriting remained as it had been back then.

Olivier looked up at Zinnia’s blushing face.

“Should I be happy you never showed me this when you wrote it?”

“It would have been … unwise.”

“_Most _unwise.”

_In the light of spring, I feel … abnormally warm everywhere. Like the sun has melted within me and now heats my every organ. I wake in the mornings drenched in sweat and a mortifying prospect. _

_My dreams._

_What I never stop dreaming about. Blue, pink, gold. All together, spinning around me. Sometimes … above me, towering. Sometimes beneath me, very close._

_I wake up and I can still feel … her. Iver’s authority made flesh, even though this town isn’t hers as it isn’t mine. I don’t understand what makes my brain dwell on her that often, but … I can’t say I repudiate it completely. It grounds me to something, even if that something is a lie._

_Because for all she is, I don’t think I will ever truly like her. Not if she keeps insisting I am out of place. Even if I know I am._

“I think I loved you, then, too,” Zinnia said, absentmindedly rubbing Olivier’s right shoulder. “I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“This doesn’t sound like love to me,” Olivier teased, reading it again. If she closed her eyes, even for half a second, she could feel it, too. That square she hadn’t gone to in forever, the sun on her back and neck, and that tiny scrawny woman selling stories.

“Not _just _love, no.” Zinnia giggled. “I loved you and I wanted you. Very complicated for my young mind to process.”

“Took me longer…” Olivier mumbled, passing the page.

Twenty-five years… Since the first line had been written and the first rude introduction had come. This book was, effectively, an account of them all. She passed her hand over the leather-bound cover, as if she were touching the delicate petals of a flower, and inhaled deeply.

“Thank you for this.”

Zinnia kissed her cheek.

“You’re welcome.”

Her grinning face was back again, there, hiding something. Always hiding, always tricking Olivier. Drawing her in, too. Twenty-five years. She’d be an idiot not to admit it had always been that way. There was no other way it could have been. They’d drawn each other out of their heads into the world.

“What else did you do?” Olivier complained.

“Come down to breakfast and you’ll see.”

In a way, it had always been like this. A vacation within their home. With a truce standing and a long life ahead of them still. Olivier wondered what new pages Zinnia would add to the book in a few years and if the things she wrote would make a good story.

Perhaps it was time Olivier added something to the words herself. Perhaps…

So she nodded and the two women got dressed. Blue and blue, always. The color of the military and the color of Olivier’s soul. What awaited them was a sea of it, covering every inch of the kitchens with wide young smiles.

Olivier’s heart skipped a beat. Not a line on most of their faces, hopeful smiles, powerful bodies, and capable brains. These were her people. And she was theirs, even after so long—after so many had left her already. Briggs continued to throw young people at her to care for when the older died or left.

Not all of them were young, but they still managed to look it, somehow. They had hope in their eyes. They had _life _in them, shining bright like a miniature sun. Most had never seen war, and those who had had learned to forget it.

She and Zinnia walked to them, and Olivier forced herself to smile. Even when she shook Austin’s hand and tried to tell him off, softly, for planning this without her consent.

He was nearing fifty now, he had fought at Central and lived to tell the tale, but his eyes shone the brightest in the room. His other hand was occupied, holding that of another soldier.

Olivier’s smile grew a little more honest, then.

“It wouldn’t have been a surprise party with your consent, sir.”

“You go out of your way for me, you will not escape my remarks, Austin.”

“Zinnia helped, too,” he said, laughing, trying to incriminate her as well.

“Zinnia has immunity,” Olivier said, managing to keep a serious face through all this. Grumpy old Olivier, each day a little less tolerant in appearance and a lot more lenient in her heart. “Now, grab a seat before this crowd steals it, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

He sat down at her table with his partner and a few others who loudly challenged one another for the pleasure or celebrating the boss’s birthday with the boss herself. The voice and chuckles filled the kitchen with something more heartwarming that the smell of freshly baked bread. Twenty-five years later, and the heart of Briggs beat strong and proud.

They drank ale and beer, had mashed potatoes and beef, and second, third, and fourth servings. And the songs never stopped, not for one minute of it. After so long, Olivier thought she knew them all, but she was clearly wrong. The new generations had plenty less imagination but did sure know how to string whatever few verses they had come up with into a nice melody. She even caught herself stomping her foot to the rhythm of the music.

She caught herself doing a lot more than just that, too.

“I sent word to your family, too!” Zinnia said to her ear in something closer to a yell than a whisper. “But the bastards all declined the trip.”

“Even Alex?” Olivier said, feigning surprise. Her brother had no problem coming north if it meant seeing her and, most importantly, seeing his new pen pal Zinnia and pulling the two of them into a bear hug. But lately he’d been preoccupied, so it was no wonder he’d passed. Six hours were too many to spend on a train for a birthday party with the country’s least soft men.

“We should visit sometime, let them see us,” Zinnia tried again. “It’s been a while.”

“One thing at a time, flower girl.”

Zinnia made a face. “Too wilted now for that, love.”

“Old habits die hard. And it’s my birthday.”

Zinnia rolled her eyes at Olivier and tried to get back in sync with the men singing. She called herself wilted, but all Olivier ever saw was the same beauty she’d fell for years ago, now transformed into something Olivier knew well how to love. Strength and finesse, an organized mind and a messy brain, and a woman who finally knew what she wanted.

Somewhere along the line, Olivier had spent those first few years secretly expecting Zinnia to bail one day. Because Briggs was cold and smelly and loud, and their room was small, and Olivier had a very limited emotional range, even when she worked at expanding it. This life wasn’t for everybody and Olivier had always suspected it was a life Zinnia had chosen out of love and not a meditated decision. And yet … Zinnia had never voiced a complaint. Despite not earning half a cens with the work she did nor a military pension, Zinnia had fallen into the world of geography and economy with ease. Strategy against the Drachman, too, back in the days of the northern wars.

They’d spent a life together—a Briggs life.

But Olivier remembered those brief times they had … gone elsewhere. Haling Cove and the Selenic Ocean. Only a square inch of the whole world. They had crossed over to Novorbem after … that day with the ship she had bought on a whim. But a line had been crossed that day, though.

A line in Olivier’s heart.

Suddenly, the voices of her men singing, stomping their feet, laughing like teenagers, were swallowed by the fading squawking of the gulls on shore and the gentle swaying of the hull of the ship against the tiny waves of the ocean. It had been so quiet, so intimate… They’d still been healing, back then. They’d left home behind, a war on pause.

What Olivier had wanted them, in those waters, had been dismissed because she would never follow through with it in those circumstances. Not with a war to fight.

She realized now that it had only been a precaution. Just like with Buccaneer. Because she couldn’t have borne it, if her _wife _died for _her _cause. Like many others had died and many others would inevitably die.

But now … even in that very memory of the Selenic waters, the word ‘wife’ didn’t latch thorns onto Olivier’s heart. Instead, it warmed it. There was no war now. She could cross the line without fear of fire raining on her.

_Well, you do know what you have to do, don’t you? If you want to make this flower your wife._

Fate got ahead of that, as it often did, as if it could hear her and had decided to thwart her plans before she even made any.

“Olivier!” Zinnia said, loud again to make herself heard over the rumble. “I’ve been thinking … Isn’t it time?”

Did Olivier have a heart or a stallion between her lungs? Racing at those words like it had never raced at anything, because Zinnia couldn’t do this to her. Not when it had taken Olivier so long to come to terms with what she wanted to do.

But she couldn’t take the choice away from Zinnia either. It would be a marriage anyway, wouldn’t it? No matter who asked who. Hadn’t they already been as close to married as possible all these years? Sewing each other’s wounds, waking each other up from nightmares, preparing together for northern incursions, travelling north and south as one…?

What did a few words matter, when in reality the bond was there—when the necessary commitment had never failed them?

Olivier’s heart calmed when she did. And she hoped—for all she loved Zinnia—that her face soothed her before such a big question. It made _sense _for Zinnia to ask, because she had always had the initiative. Not during that first kiss, but every last one of them after she had guided Olivier through. This was Zinnia’s question.

“What are we waiting for now? I mean… the fort can live without you, you know now they can. And whoever Central sends, the danger isn’t what it used to be, but—”

“You want to … move away?” Olivier said, confused. “Where would we go?”

Zinnia shrugged. “I don’t know. _Any_where. I just … I just think it’s time. You’ve served well, you deserve a timely retirement.”

If the world had been noise, now it quietened.

And all Olivier could hear was her own heart, beating and laughing at her. _She wasn’t going to ask, you idiot._

The men around them changed the tempo as they delved into a new song, and Olivier gulped and tried to pretend this had been the focus of the conversation all along. A conversation about retirement. About leaving Briggs after a lifetime clinging to its walls.

“I can’t retire until next _year,_” Olivier said, ever the cold-minded one. The one who came up with choices and _made _them when no one else even thought to.

Zinnia shrugged again. “We can start planning for it. Where to go, who to promote…”

Olivier had never imagined a proper _life _outside the walls of Briggs. For years, she had hoped for a death in battle, fighting for her cause and her men, and dying valiantly defending them all, her body laying forever beneath the grounds of the fort. But she wasn’t as stupid as to seek death for such a noble end.

A life outside of the north… With Zinnia. She would only have to worry about so little. Where to settle, what to do for leisure, and who to grant power over her fort, now only hers in memory. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought, not really. Just a very new one.

The thought of marriage made it familiar. If Olivier retired, taking Zinnia with her, they could _marry. _Neither of them would be a soldier, so there would be no special permission to ask for, and the threat of death would be only the routinely risk all humans face in their normal life.

A _normal _life. A _married _life.

A wife, a house, a greenhouse.

And time. So much time.

To practice fencing underneath the moonlight, pretend to be interested in bread and thread, and read Zinnia’s books under a tree every night, on a big wide porch.

With the sea in the distance. And a ship on their dock.

“Yeah,” Olivier finally said. “Okay.”

All the light in Zinnia’s soul came rushing to her cheeks and eyes.

“Yeah???”

“We can _start_ planning for it. We’ll see after that.”

After all, they had a year to figure it all out. It would be enough to tie all loose ends, to leave Briggs a better place than she had found it, and … say her goodbyes.

* * *

Haling Cove had only gotten bigger with the years. With the waves of tourists landing, getting off their luxurious and dangerous planes in the capital of Chalybes, the town had grown in size and population. The main street and the sea promenade had implemented rows and rows of food stalls, in the very same fashion other greater cities had, and the beaches had lengthened westward, artificial sand coming in to make up for the fact that now there were more hundreds of people looking to sit on it.

For many years now, Olivier and Zinnia had gotten away from all of that, come every summer. Legally, their little beach home was still within the boundaries of the town as it was, but with its unstoppable development, its location was no longer thought of as part of Haling Cove, honeymoon destination and richest harbor town in the whole of the Chalybese coast.

The day they moved in, permanently, Zinnia wished out loud for a shorter way to the closest grocery store, and Olivier joked about getting a butler, knowing full well they would never agree to getting one. Their retirement would start at the very same place they’d both learned to find leisure. Zinnia in books and museum artifacts in Haling Castle, and Olivier in taking long walks near the sea. After god knew how long, Olivier and the sea had made peace with each other.

They were no longer youthful enough to care about being far away from neighbors, and Zinnia would always find her way to their doors, anyway, no matter how long she had to walk to get there.

Life came easy to them, there. It was almost as good as a second home. Almost. Olivier often found herself getting anxious, her body expecting work and her brain receiving none. The only responsibility she had now was writing back to her family from time to time and spending these years with Zinnia.

For many months, Olivier decided marriage was out of her reach, because Zinnia didn’t seem to want to jump into it, hadn’t ever pried about getting married, and seemed as content here as Olivier had hoped she would. It wasn’t just the neighbors, the museum, or the beach. Zinnia took great pleasure in simply existing on their porch, after dark, and talking. Sometimes about the war, sometimes about the next day’s lunch, sometimes about Zinnia’s stories—always getting started, never getting finished—and sometimes about Briggs. But never about officializing something that, for the most part, already _was _official.

Olivier had never said ‘I do’, but she had meant it. She would have never agreed to this life she lived now if her companion in it had been anyone else. Some things only ever belonged to Zinnia.

And this question did. This question without a yes or no answer that came to her sometimes, right on that birch porch at night, when the sea spoke over their words and challenged them to face adversity, the same way it did, licking at sand and eroding rock. If the sea was able to bore crevices into continents, golfs and bays, why couldn’t Olivier ask the question?

In her youth, marriage had been a tie. A tie to a husband, normally. A way to send daughters away to someone else’s home and ensure their survival, never their enjoyment. In her adult age, it had been an impossibility. For a soldier like her to get married, it meant facing the likelihood of that marriage ending in death. And it meant _exposure _to her superiors. In her sixties, it meant, quite simply, _memories _coming alive_._

Of a hotel in the heart of Haling Cove, a tiny room that smelled of cold in the heart of the north, a train compartment. Many ‘I love you’s, many more kisses. And a promise.

Olivier remembered it all. Some of it had been written down for her to remember, but most of it … she could recall on her own. The yellows, that warm inviting color that had welcomed in all of her blueness without a second thought.

Few were as lucky as she had been for almost half of her life, now.

And, maybe, if she was brave now, she would get even luckier. She would get to _show _the world who she loved the most. Despite convention, despite religious prohibitions. Olivier and Zinnia were only a couple to those who knew, the rest of the world probably only interpreted them as being friends, companions, even. Nothing more.

And there was nothing Olivier _loved _more than proving the world wrong.

So she asked the question.

That night, they hadn’t stayed home. It was too warm inside after a long day of the sun coming in, unrestricted, and neither woman was in a mood to cook. Zinnia had been about to get up from the porch and prepare something quick, anyway, disastrous as she was. But Olivier put a hand on her forearm and shook her head.

She could hear music out in the street, a long way away, and for once she didn’t mind putting up with it for a little bit. It had been a while since she had tasted Haling Cove anchovies.

“A dish many try but few foreigners truly like,” Olivier pointed out now.

“I doubt that we qualify as foreigners anymore, dear.” Zinnia laughed.

They were residents, were they not? They were the sort of people tourists asked where to go eat. Olivier always got a little bit mad, offended that they’d think her anything but Amestrian.

“We might be regulars now, come to think of it,” Olivier said.

And upon asking Zinnia if she was up for a stroll and the prospect of a full stomach, Zinnia could only raise an eyebrow at her.

“The day I refuse such an offer, pinch me.”

Olivier laughed, too, and took her arm. Neither needed it to walk comfortably, that was many years in the future for them, but they both liked it. It made them feel closer, like they wouldn’t get separated from one another even in a crowd. Linked for life.

They walked slowly to the town’s center, talking about how this summer Haling Cove was warmer than ever.

“Global warming,” Olivier grumbled.

It was being one of the warmest summers on record, and Olivier—her body temperature still used to Briggs’ freezing cold—always made sure to despise it as openly as she could, surrounded by teenagers in swimsuits and tourists in sun hats.

Life was out in the streets these days, with people gathering in terraces and on the beach, despite the hour. Some even bought food to-go and ate it among friends, bending over about stories Olivier always doubted were as interesting as hers had been.

Joining it all today as she was, she didn’t say a word when they passed the groups of college students chuckling at something she didn’t doubt was immensely funny to make them _be _so loud. Zinnia couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Look who’s behaving!”

“I am a well-behaved lady,” Olivier said. “And not at all interested in ruining other people’s fun.”

It almost sounded rehearsed, and Zinnia’s cackle confirmed it.

“She _learns._”

“Oh, shut it, you,” Olivier said. “And pick somewhere to eat. I’m hungry.”

Olivier always was hungry. And angry. One day there would be a word for her.

“There’s a little place there and they advertise anchovies very enthusiastically. It takes up about two thirds of the menu space.”

Olivier squinted her eyes at the direction Zinnia was pointing at.

“You can read that?”

“It is very large.”

“Well, let’s go there, then.”

The place happened to retain much of the town’s tradition regarding fishing and original dishes, which Olivier liked and Zinnia fawned over like she didn’t know already half of the newspaper headlines framed on the walls and the species of the fish shown in sepia pictures.

It smelled like an old town, too. Like beer and deep-cooked food. A little spot in this new modern world that still reminded of some instances of the old one.

The anchovies were, of course, delicious. The bread beneath them was spongy and its crust perfectly toasted, and the fish fell apart in their mouths, almost wetter than their saliva.

After almost licking their plates clean, getting every last piece of oil and fish on their loaves of bread, Zinnia and Olivier left for the street, again. Going home this early, when there was such nice music being played there—Zinnia thought she could hear a guitar—and such a welcoming ambiance, was unthinkable.

They traversed the crowds of passersby, quietly sharing a laugh or two about the ones that looked at a map nonstop and seemed to be lost to the point of no return, and arrived at the sea promenade. Tall trees now framed both sides of it, and nice stone benches had been placed all long its surface for people to sit on.

In the distance, they could hear young people screaming out of fun, getting into the water despite the penetrating dark. A few streetlights illuminated the promenade, but once you crossed over to the sandy dunes that preceded the sea, the darkness swallowed you entirely and you were on your own.

Eventually, the farther Olivier and Zinnia walked, the gatherings of people grew less and less loud. Only a few groups sat, right out of the promenade, still where there was light, and they were merely talking at normal levels.

“Do you want to walk on the sand for a bit?” Zinnia asked Olivier.

“Sure,” she said.

Even if the both of them were wearing sandals, neither took them off. The sand was pleasantly cool against their skins, soft … like a grainy mantle, and dry as their feet were it would slip off as soon as they started walking on a solid sidewalk again. And the smell of the sea… It still felt like something close to a miracle that they were here, _living _here, so close to something so precious.

The whole world awaited in that ocean, floating in pieces. This was just but a continent in it.

“Zinnia…” Olivier said, after a while of walking in silence. “Might we sit down?”

“Are you tired?” Zinnia asked, frowning slightly. These days, she asked this question more often than she should have, worried about her despite having no real reason to. Which, of course, only annoyed Olivier, who liked to boast on a daily basis about how well she’d aged.

“Not particularly, I just want a change of scenery...”

This one time, Olivier didn’t fight back and didn’t flex in a mirror move of her brother’s, because the situation demanded a little bit of maturity. And if she strayed from the plan, she had no clue what would happen to her emotions.

In the dark, now, it was impossible for her to know what face Zinnia made at that. Olivier could only hear her agree with a noncommittal little noise and breathe in relief when they got moving.

They left the promenade and ventured a little bit closer to the light, then sat alone in the vast beach, hearing the sea cave in and out of the dunes. It was one of the world’s only constants, and it calmed Olivier like the sound of her own heart had for many years.

It had to be now. Now, in a place similar to the one they’d had for years, since before Haling Cove had turned popular. Now, when her mind was clear and her heart was set on it. She was old enough now that the opposite wouldn’t have mattered too much, either, but her memories were fresh enough in her mind for her to know it was now or never.

_Just ask her. _

Olivier had run once to kiss her, to _show _her that she was welcome in Briggs and would always be, that she had a place to stay and a shoulder to cry on.

This was … a walk on smooth, soft sand.

She took Zinnia’s hand first, squeezed it lightly. How many times had she done this very thing? It was impossible to count them all. Twenty-five years of love were impossible to break down in smaller units. And yet she knew, just now, that this time was different.

In all irony, her own proposal would be just as magical to her as she had always mocked others to be. She was old, what did it matter? This was hers, not everybody else’s.

Hers and Zinnia’s.

“Do you remember…” Olivier started, looking at the sea, pulling Zinnia closer until her head was on her bare shoulder. “… that day we came to the beach for the first time?”

Zinnia kept quiet for a second, then Olivier heard her take a long breath that could not give way to anything good and proper.

“You mean the day you were so horny you could barely wait to get to the hotel?”

Olivier rolled her eyes. She had waited patiently, she had been gentlemanly and drowned the idea of touching herself on a public beach, just like that of shucking the dress off of Zinnia under the light of a lamppost. _Someone _was remembering this all wrong.

“Precisely.”

“It was a good day.”

“Yeah…”

The first of many. But Olivier remembered it differently than just horniness after a few years and an ocean stretching far ahead. She remembered … having sat there and just … _known_.

She remembered thinking late at night that she did more than just _know, _she’d wanted it, for as little as it had lasted, for all its impossibility. It had been the first time she’d thought of marriage with Zinnia.

“You were beautiful that day,” Olivier recalled. “In your wet swimsuit.”

“Well, they’re built to get wet…”

“And your gentleness.”

After five years, Zinnia had been _gentle _with her, even with Olivier at her worst, at her most disruptive. They had loved each other till very late, and then Olivier had broken into a million thoughts, like a wave into a million water droplets.

And the one that had remained had been: _Marry me._

How to word it now? When they were older and better, more used to being together, and ready for whatever came, because their love would never wilt even in the face of the toughest of hardships.

“I loved you so much on that day…” Olivier mumbled.

Zinnia waited, heartbeats pounding against her chest. She held Olivier’s hand a little tighter. Olivier did not throw that word around lightly.

“I loved you, then, too.”

“And you’ve loved me for the past twenty-five years as well,” Olivier said. _Now. _“In 1915, you followed me to Central, and when the war was over, you followed me back home to another war. And now I’ve followed you here, after a lifetime playing soldier. All this time a part of me has wondered why.” She chuckled softly. “It’s silly, but I did wonder. I may be a good leader, but I am not a good lover.”

“That’s not true…” Zinnia whispered.

“And I’ve always known that I would follow you anywhere. Farther than you would me, even if I’ve never proved it.”

Zinnia put her index finger on Olivier’s half-open lips.

“You don’t have to prove it to me. I’ve always had the promise.”

And then—then Olivier smiled, her round face partially illuminated in the streetlight beams, and Zinnia’s heart dropped a little bit, just a little bit.

“I know,” Olivier said. “But, the question is, would you like to have more than a promise?”

“Oh, Olivier,” Zinnia said wetly. She’d been caught up. To the question, to everything that had been beneath it, around it, inside it. Olivier could tell Zinnia had tears in her eyes.

To be truthful to the facts, so did she.

“Zinnia,” she said, “would you like to marry me?”

* * *

No Armstrong wedding can happen intimately. It was a tradition that had been passed down for generations, that of a party so mind-blowing the world was unable to forget about it until the next Armstrong marriage happened. Not in vain were the Armstrongs such a vast family on Amestrian territories, it could not go down any other way.

The day the invitations had marked as the official union of Olivier Armstrong and Zinnia Erwin dawned clear and bright, the biggest wedding gift there can be. The light filtered in through to their bed, caught them asleep still.

A scene like many others in the past twenty-six years, the covers slightly pushed back, the sheets tangled up between Olivier’s legs, and Zinnia’s face covered in graying blonde hair. They’d fallen asleep holding each other, unsure if they’d be able to sleep at all that night, but the worry and the silly giggles, improper of women their age, had given way quite soon to a night-long stupor.

When Zinnia opened her eyes, she saw Olivier’s neck exposed before her, hair flowing onto the pillow and her own head. She couldn’t help but smile when her heart realized what day it was and what was going to happen in a few hours. Without even thinking about it, she leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss on the skin of Olivier’s neck.

If someone had told her years before that this day would come, she would have laughed. Olivier had never wanted marriage, not the way people wanted it, she’d been content with her war plans and her budget lists and training sessions, even more so with a little bit of love on her plate. And Zinnia had just … never thought about the possibility more than a couple times. She’d been younger, then, fuller of hope and silliness, and if then the idea had seemed farfetched, when Olivier had asked her Zinnia had not even _known _for a second what to answer. Until she’d realized that the only marriage in the world that mattered was her own. It would be the only marriage that would have to make sense in her mind.

And here she was now. Watching her soon-to-be wife sleep like she’d never slept before. Thinking that, indeed, this was a dream come true. A fairy-tale wedding, a house miles and miles southwest in Haling Cove with a ship and the beach, a wife she’d loved almost all her life—or so it felt like. In her writings, this had never been the life she’d dreamed up for herself, but it was the life she knew she’d never stop writing about now.

Nostalgic, she began to push Olivier’s hair away from her own face into the pillow they shared.

Of course, she never got to do it.

“If you’re planning to steal me away before it’s time, it’s not going to work,” Olivier’s sleepy voice grumbled. “I’m heavy.”

“Oh, I don’t have to _steal _you. I have you already.”

Gently, Olivier rolled over on the bed. The blue of her eyes was something Zinnia had expected to be over by now, but every time she saw it a part of her was left breathless.

And Olivier must feel the same way about her, because she didn’t look away for a long time. Today, right now, there was no reason to, anyway.

“Ready?” she asked her.

Against all odds, Olivier was secure in what was going to happen. Zinnia knew, intellectually, that she was trying to rush it in fear that it never came to be. It didn’t strike her as strange, Olivier had grown up repressed, told time and time again that a real woman wasn’t _like _her. Zinnia chuckled to herself. And then Olivier had gone and shown the world she made her own kind of ‘real’, forged it in steel and fire.

“Ready when you are.”

Neither made any move to get out of bed yet. Instead, Olivier pulled Zinnia close into her arms, despite how hot she usually found these Central mornings to be.

They’d walked into the room barely a few days earlier, dragging with themselves half of their belongings—Olivier her blue uniform, just in case; Zinnia her knives, because one never knew. The house had remained more or less the same after Olivier’s parents had died. It had fallen to Alex to take care of the family home, and he had followed through as best he’d been able to, living in a different house himself. Olivier still wished he’d made major changes in her old bedroom, it had made her feel _younger _and _stupider _when she’d seen it again after a long time.

Now, she glanced up at the old walls, at the few books on the shelves, and the typewriter—now obsolete—on her desk, and remembered when this had been the room of a child.

“I’m really happy we’re doing this,” Zinnia murmured a while after. “It was about time, wasn’t it?”

Olivier chuckled hoarsely. “It’s precisely the right time.”

“D’you wish your parents were here to see?” Zinnia asked.

“Not really,” Olivier said. “My father might have approved. But—” She chuckled again. “It certainly would have been the death of my mother. And he wouldn’t have forgiven me for that…”

“Wherever she is now, I hope she knows this is, partly, a big fuck-you to her.”

And Olivier was already half-laughing, but this made her laughter grow infinitely. “_Just _partly?”

“Well, I’m not marrying you just to piss off your dead mom, Olivier, I hope you _know _that_._”

“Of course.”

Olivier pulled her close. _No, of course not._ This would always be so much more important than her parents had been. _This _was her real family. The family she’d chosen, the family that had walked with her into the unknown and emerged back from the ashen clouds. The family that had cheered her on and comforted her, loved her and taught her that not everything is duty. A family that would never have her name but would always be part of the reason why she was, after so long, proud of being an Armstrong.

“Let’s go, then,” Zinnia said.

And Olivier waited a second, just a second, feeling in her bones the moment that would never happen again—the lying here together, waiting for the final answer—and then sat up straight, pushed the covers away.

“To battle,” she said, jokingly.

* * *

A string quartet was playing an old song, the same one that had been on the radio the day Olivier and Zinnia had bought the house in Haling Cove. The original had lyrics, of course, but for this special occasion they’d thought the music would be enough. It wasn’t like the audience today would fully appreciate the sung story of a sailor that fell in love with a deadly siren. Not _this _audience, anyway.

The music reached their ears faintly, from a different place altogether. Zinnia dared take a look out of the car and saw the squadrons of people standing beside white wooden chairs, their outfits a wedding cake of fashion trends. They had all turned, at the sound of the first note, towards the black car parked only just outside the green paradise around them all. And they waited, like she waited.

“Still have time to get cold feet,” said Olivier to her right, throwing her long braid back.

She looked … dashing in the white two-piece suit she’d chosen. She would eclipse everything else today, Zinnia was sure of that, after years of lonely blue. Even if the lining of the jacket _was _that very same shade of the color. She looked every bit a general as ever, broad-shouldered, face serious, and … with that poise only _she _had. The tell-tale of all tell-tales for Olivier Armstrong.

It took Zinnia a few seconds to react.

“I don’t think so, general.”

“Then—” Olivier said, getting out of the car with a gracility Zinnia wished for these days. She quickly strode to Zinnia’s door and opened it, a gloved hand extended towards her, her smile the most powerful of promises. “Let me walk you down the aisle.”

Despite having decided to keep her surname—the only relic she had of different times—, Zinnia’s heart knew this was the only moment in life she would be able to feel like Mrs. Armstrong.

Her hand grasped Olivier’s, shaking only a little. Then the long white skirt of her long-sleeved dress cascaded down over her feet as she got them out of the car and stood over the gravel. Nothing mattered more to her right now than the sight _around _her. As if someone had dug around in a few fairytales and teleported out a few details at a time. All those people, come from all corners of Amestris for these few next moments, _smiling _at her with something so very close to real affection that it made no difference that it wasn’t. And the background, all that green covering the hills, and the enormity and quietness of the sky around it all, it could almost cross her mind that this was nothing but a daydream…

Then Olivier offered her an arm to wrap her own around, and Zinnia did, with well-rehearsed ease. None of this was in her head. It was happening all around her, inside her.

They took a deep breath they both needed, and began to walk as the music wrapped them around the memories of a lifetime, every single eye on them. On the couple that had defied everything from the very first day and continued to do so, getting married so many years after having fallen in love.

A minister awaited at the end of the carpeted gravel, smiling and expectant. Neither of them knew him personally, and that was why he was there, because Olivier would never have been able to let her own brother marry the two of them, no matter how hard he’d insisted, and Zinnia would have found the situation too funny to pay attention to her own wedding day.

The distance towards the archway, embedded with ivy and white flowers, where the ceremony would take place, felt like the passing of the years to Olivier. Every step got her closer to the woman she was, not the woman she had once been, pursuing everyone’s security but her own. She’d lived and lost and learned, but today what she appreciated the most was having _loved_, having known how to, and having chosen it over the death of a soldier.

She remembered, now, the friend who had spoken about dying like a man once, the one friend who could not be here today, and turned her face around to gleam at Zinnia, putting a hand to hers.

Her retirement had meant that Olivier was ready to die like a woman, not a soldier. The soldier had died the day she’d left Briggs behind. And the woman had been born long ago, when a brown-skinned, giddy-eyed writer had walked in.

_My wife, _Olivier thought.

Zinnia’s sly smile said: _Not yet. But soon._

‘Soon’ couldn’t come fast enough. Olivier had waited a lifetime to call Zinnia her spouse.

Almost magically, the last few notes of the song ended as soon as their steps, in synchronicity, stopped by the archway and their heads turned to the minister.

Silence was made in an instant, the same way the daylight goes out completely once the sun goes under. The audience took their seats and waited a few moments in which all Olivier was able to feel was her heartbeat, pounding against her ribcage.

“First things first,” the minister said, loud and clear, “thank you all for coming on this beautiful summer day to witness the marriage between Olivier Mira Armstrong and Zinnia Erwin.”

That was all it took for Zinnia to make a face at Olivier, for exactly half an instant having completely forgotten that this was a public ceremony, and convey without words and without any need for them a thought along the lines of: _I can’t believe I have to find out you have a middle name on the day of our wedding!_

And Olivier just shrugged, her grin wider than Zinnia had ever seen it.

They might be in the heart of Amestris, before a hundred people, but in that moment they were alone at home, their hearts dancing to a music only they could hear and, maybe, the gentle humming of the tides.

“When my old friend Roy asked me to perform this ceremony, I thought he must be mad. ‘It will be too political of a wedding, it will have much more mediatic attention than a poor minister like me can handle’, I told him.” Almost as if to accentuate his words, the few journalists at the back and the sides started taking pictures. “After all, one of our brides _is _an Armstrong, and the turnout was expected to be—and has been—quite big. But then Roy sat me down and told me the whole story behind this wedding.”

Olivier had to refrain from rolling her eyes. She knew how dramatic Mustang could be with his friends and had suspicions about his dramatization of her love story.

“Twenty-six years. Most of us get married by year two, because society tells us there is something wrong with us if we don’t, that we’re afraid of commitment and unable to maintain a relationship for much longer than that. We get married because, in a way, we feel we have to. Olivier and Zinnia are getting married because they _want _to. They are getting married despite knowing what many could say about them—‘well, isn’t this about the Armstrong fortune being passed on to a foreigner who desires it enough to tie the knot?’—but what ‘many’ don’t know is that for these twenty-six years Olivier and Zinnia have been living austerely in a military fort, defending our borders and keeping our peace in what my dear friend Roy affectionately calls ‘a room barely big enough for Armstrong’s ego’.”

An amused chorus of laughter came from the audience. Olivier felt tempted to flip Mustang off right there, but she didn’t. There would be plenty of chances to pester the co-president of Amestris.

“If what they wanted was wealth, they’ve been putting off actually enjoying it for quite a while, folks.” The minister smiled at them fondly, then looked back at the crowd. “They’re here today because they’ve always loved each other, in adversity and good fortune alike, and now is the first time in a long time that they don’t have to be afraid of that love being lost in war. Today is a testament to their love and, perhaps more importantly, their _lives._”

He took a deep breath and continued talking.

“Lives that include saving the world—twice—and lives that include leaving everything known and loved to settle down in a different country, where weather and language barriers make it a little harder to feel welcome. Where, after so long, they’ve also found a home. Lives that have _changed _and continue to do so, many many years after first being intertwined. Today … these lives change in ways that can’t be undone as long as whatever united them never fails to.”

Zinnia squeezed Olivier’s hand a little. _This is it, _she was thinking. _This is where he asks us the question._

A question that can never truly change, no matter how differently worded it is. It is a question that rightfully bonds what was already together.

_And this is when I answer it, _Olivier thought.

The minister turned to her first, his smile knowing many more things he had not said out loud to this audience today, but that Mustang had surely told him.

“Olivier Armstrong,” he said. “Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect Zinnia Erwin, forsaking all others, and holding only unto her forevermore?”

Her throat a little raspy, she said, “I do.” Then, she turned to face Zinnia’s blushing face, and to her and her only she said: “I, Olivier Mira Armstrong—” As it could be no other way, Zinnia let out a tiny chuckle. “—take you, Zinnia Erwin, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

The minister spoke to Zinnia now, and the fact that she was able to hear him would forever be a mystery, when she was this absorbed in Olivier, standing right there in all her bride light like she did this every day and had learned to look her best for it—for Zinnia.

“And you, Zinnia Erwin,” he said. “Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect Olivier Armstrong, forsaking all others, and holding only unto her forevermore?”

She nodded before she spoke, for this was a question that was better replied to without words. But if there need be words, she knew the ones she’d choose.

“I do,” she said, her voice a little smaller than usual, but ten times as full of emotion, as she looked into the eyes of the woman that had changed everything. “I, Zinnia Erwin, take you, Olivier Armstrong, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

And it was such an easy promise to make, because deep down she had always known she’d keep it. Even from the beginning, when all Olivier had been was a scary stranger twice as tall as everyone else and with a heart too good to be true that she kept hidden behind walls of ice.

_Spring had dragged flowers right to the very feet of Major General Olivier Armstrong. Yellow flowers that smelled like freedom and defiance. She had despised them, despised the shortness of breath that came whenever she caught their scent in the air, their sight on Iver’s main square._

_“Am I going to keep finding you here every day without fault?” she’d asked._

_“Depends. Will you keep coming every day?” the girl in the yellow flower dress had said. A spring of a different kind, not wind and pollen, but flesh and bone. And with a wicked smile that reminded Olivier of the brevity of life and the immensity a single second of it contained._

_“You’re on my way,” Olivier had only said._

_“I’ll just move aside, then,” the girl had replied._

_And—oh—just how different things would be in a few months. When Olivier’s way would only be tolerable with Zinnia and her flower dresses on it, when Zinnia refused to be cast aside and let Olivier walk alone._

“Then, by the power vested in me,” the minister said, “it is my honor and delight to declare you both married. Go forth and live each day to the fullest, my friends, for a single day of life can bring many joys.”

He smiled at the two of them.

“You may now kiss your wife.”

They did, for the crowd, and the crowd cheered. But neither could hear it, all they had ringing in their ears was the word ‘wife’, and the thought that that single combination of letters and sounds somehow managed to perfectly represent how they felt about one another, about somehow belonging to each other.

When they came to, staring into each other’s eyes after the kiss, the applause had not died yet. And the loudness of Alex Armstrong came from one of the front rows.

“I can’t believe my eldest sister just got married!” he was sobbing almost unintelligibly to his husband, who was hugging him timidly, patting him in the back for comfort. “After so many years with the Little One!”

“Dad, you’re can be _so embarrassing _sometimes,” said a young man to his right, laughing a little and making eye contact with his other father.

“He’ll cry harder on your wedding day, consider this your warning,” his other father said, laughing a little too.

Alex only sobbed louder. “Of course I will! I always cry at weddings…”

Olivier smiled to herself, hand in hand with her _wife, _and walked closer to him. Alex first, always. She hadn’t seen him for a few years, and time had certainly not mellowed Alex Armstrong’s famous emotional outbursts. His only curl of once blonde hair and famous mustache had turned almost completely gray, and his baby face had long since been lost to agreeable lines on it. All in all, he would never truly change, or else he wouldn’t be making a scene in public.

“What kind of a father wouldn’t _cry _on his _son’s _wedding day?” Alex continued to say, oblivious to his sister being in the vicinity.

“You’re getting married, Oliver?” Olivier told his nephew, her almost namesake, as a greeting. She still remembered yelling at Alex on the phone the day they’d told her he and Bernard had adopted a boy named almost like her, begging him to change the boy’s name for something that didn’t feel like a ‘living gravestone’. She’d grown used to it, eventually, and loved the boy as she would her own son.

“Nope, he’s just crying about the possibility,” the boy said with a grin. Then, he blushed a little and said: “You both look so beautiful today, aunts.”

She took one good look at Oliver. If her memory didn’t fail her, he must have been twenty already. Old enough to _date _and certainly old enough to marry as well. Of course Alex would be crying about the possibility! In fact, she was sure he was making good use of his crying over her wedding today and slowly transitioning to crying over his son’s. There would be no stopping him today.

But as soon as the tears had come, they went, and Alex Armstrong left the arms of his husband—tiny, in comparison—to take the hand of his sister’s lovely wife.

“Little one”, he called her, “you look _most_ charming. I have never seen such beauty.”

“Oi,” said Bernard under his breath. “You’re married, remember?”

The chuckle was collective. A man of few words, Bernard Armstrong was, which explained why he fit in so well with Alex, because Alex had enough words to fill two lifetimes. Olivier still remembered the wedding, around twenty-years ago. Alex’s vows—and tears—had gone on forever. He still cried from joy and, he said, a feeling of undeserved luck, on every anniversary.

“Are the rest of your sisters around?” Zinnia asked Alex. “I want to see the little ones. The _actual _little ones.”

“Oh, you’ll always be the little one to me, Zinnia,” he said, kissing her hand again, then added: “They’re at the back. The babies were crying.”

“We’ll come with,” Bernard said. “I haven’t had a chance to say hello to Adrian yet.”

On the relatively short way, Olivier and Zinnia stopped a few times to greet someone else. Some came from all over Amestris—members of the noblest families in the country, friends of her deceased father—but a few were distant cousins of Zinnia, come from small villages in Ishval and the border with the East Area where her mother had been born.

So many people had come to see them wed if felt almost strange to realize now that they all _had _been witness to the two of them being completely enraptured in one another, exchanging silent vows and old promises. It was as public as their relationship had ever gone, although nothing would ever compare to the fated day in which Olivier had stood, tall and proud and a little bit scared, and finally made it known to her troops that she loved Zinnia.

_Some of you may have already heard of this. As a rumor, as something else, perhaps even as a truth someone else sold to you. I intend on admitting to that truth. For some time now, this woman right here… This woman, she has been sharing her life with me._

In the end, the wedding guests gathered in smaller groups, talking among themselves as they waited for the hired help to finish setting the dinner tables, a few hills north of there, and the Armstrong family reunited at last.

“Jackie, Aaron!” Oliver said, waving at his cousins. 

It was truly a bigger conglomeration of people than those of the photographers, a few paces behind them. Amue and her husband Denton waited side by side with Strongine and her husband Basil, all still demurely seated, watching Jacqueline’s three-year-old daughter Camille and Aaron’s five-year-old daughter Dalina play and run around together. Standing by a baby stroller, a few chairs to their left, Catherine and Adrian each held a baby smaller than their arms, Isabella and Christina. Alex and Bernard greeted everyone, then joined Basil and Denton, animatedly talking about the wedding and the food that was to come.

The Armstrong family at large, now fully reunited.

Oliver said a quick hello to everybody and immediately joined Jacqueline and Aaron and their respective spouses, Stefan and Dana. It was the second adult ring of the family, although their conversation was much more different than that of the older adults, who were focused on the children but hardly spoke of them.

Zinnia heard Oliver, Jacqueline and Aaron talk about Camille going to school soon and Dalina already knowing all her letters. For second, it hit her hard that she and Olivier were three-fold aunts and two-fold _great_-aunts now, of all things in the world. 

She and Olivier approached Catherine first. Zinnia immediately had a throwback to over thirty years ago, when Olivier had looked like her in different clothes. Little Catherine Armstrong was now the same age Olivier had been when the wars had ended and life had truly begun.

“Congratulations,” Catherine’s husband, Adrian, told them. “Beautiful service.”

“Thank you,” Olivier said. “I hope you enjoyed it.”

It didn’t take long for Zinnia to break the silence that settled right after.

“How old are they?” she asked, pointing at the babies in Catherine and Adrian’s arms. One quick peek and she now noticed the babies perfectly resembled each other.

Catherine rocked baby Isabella and smiled like Olivier had never smiled. Like women were supposed to. It felt so strange to watch Olivier’s face gesture in ways it never would…

“Barely a few months old,” Catherine said, grinning wider. “Can you believe it?”

For a while, they all gushed together. Zinnia asked to hold Isabella for a little bit, and remembered the first time she’d held Oliver, almost twenty years ago. He had been the first, the same way Olivier had been the first, and after him had come a long line of Armstrong babies. Like she had been, too, he was the eldest, unmarried, and without any sings of wanting to any time soon. He had her kindness, too. Something that had been passed down the Armstrong family since Alex had first seen the light of the world.

Zinnia looked at them and wondered how the hell a family that had never been close or wanted to be had ended up gathering together like this. The little ones played together like true cousins, loud and childlike, tugging at the adults’ clothes and hiding between the legs of their parents from time to time. Oliver and his eldest cousins talked about finance and parenthood and laughed about the world’s new modernities. They were growing up, Zinnia thought. Out of everyone’s reach, women and men of Amestris, ready to build their own country out of the one they’d been gifted at birth. And their parents sat and gossiped, held babies in their arms, and watched the sky get dark. Their sky was, too. Amue and Strongine were both grandmothers now, they had passed on the torch, the genes, the advice. Now they sat under its dimmer light and watched because they’d already had their turn to hold it while it burned the brightest.

And Olivier … Olivier played with Dalina and Camille, talked with her nephews and niece about war and answered their questions, asked her sisters if they were well, and held both of Catherine’s twins at once. In that moment, Zinnia wondered if things would have been different, had her parents still lived to torment her on this day. If they would have made Olivier’s joy dissipate.

“Would you have invited them?” Zinnia had asked Olivier once, when this wedding day had only been a few ideas and nothing concrete yet.

“The question is, would they have come?”

Zinnia tried to imagine ancient Gwendolyn Armstrong, mother of many and true protector or none, sharing these moments with her large, large family. Perhaps she would have been able to love Oliver, because his eccentricities were shielded by the fact that he was a man, but would she have been able to tolerate a wedding between his parents, his aunties? In a way, it was better that Gwendolyn had passed away years ago.

But she found herself missing her father-in-law, Philip, who had walked his son down the aisle and cheered after Alex got to kiss his brand-new husband, a good nineteen years back. And she knew Olivier was thinking of him, too. Families were never truly complete, someone was always missing.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite Armstrong,” a gravelly voice came from behind Zinnia and Olivier. They turned around to greet whoever it was.

Him, they really had not seen in many, many years.

Before neither could think of a word to say, lost still in the memories of past decades, Alex’s excitement came pouring out of his mouth.

“Mustang, you wound me, you always said that was me,” he said, coming in at full speed to tackle him into a bear hug. They had to get out of the way, but Olivier didn’t stop observing Mustang for one second.

He looked like an improved version of himself, graying and maturing, someone with a weight on his shoulders he wasn’t afraid to carry. And the way he looked at the woman by his side, with affection and respect that only time could strengthen.

He shook hands with everyone in Olivier’s family, introduced them all to his co-president of Amestris, Riza Hawkeye. A hero of war, and a personal hero of his, for reasons that he had never told anybody.

“So, there’s no chance of me inheriting that mansion of yours now, is there, Mrs. _Erwin_?” he joked at Olivier. Only he would call her that. Only he had an inkling of an idea of how much that was true, deep down. Zinnia wasn’t Olivier Armstrong’s, Olivier was Zinnia Erwin’s. “With all these kids, I consider myself last in line already.”

Dalina and Camille chose that moment to run around him, playing a game, and he barely had time to touch one of their heads as a friendly introduction before they disappeared again.

“Oh, Roy, you’ve been last in line for _years_.” Zinnia chuckled loudly.

No one made anything of the co-presidents of Amestris being here. They were still young at heart, spoke of nothing but family, and had only nice words to say of the years they’d spent in power, fixing the world they’d once helped save. Only Alex, Olivier, and Zinnia knew what had gone down that day. That damned day in which the skies had gone blood-red and the breaths had been cut off their lungs. And the fact that they were _here _now, healed, growing, _happy…_ it was nothing but a miracle.

“So, Mustang,” Olivier told him, watching him crouch to say a proper hello to Camille and Dalina once they stopped running, “no offspring of your own? I would always have said you’d be the first to have them.”

He and Riza shared one complicit look as soon as he was back on his feet.

“We’re not even married, to be honest with you.” Mustang said.

“Who has the time, these days?” Riza said. “We keep saying we will, once we retire, but … who knows?”

Now it was Olivier and Zinnia’s turn to share a quick glance. Wasn’t that exactly what they had done?

“Well, hurry up and book a venue,” Olivier told them, “they’ll fly off your hands before you know it.”

“How’s Haling Cove?” Riza asked Olivier and Zinnia. “I hear the beaches in Chalybes are wonderful.”

“Beyond wonderful,” Zinnia replied, smiling widely. “You’re very welcome to come visit someday. When you have time, of course.”

Riza and Mustang laughed softly. Certainly, an inside joke between them. Time, time, time… Coming, always coming. Yet leaving, permanently leaving. One waded in it, never had it whole. And when one did have some of it, it was for matters not of the heart. At least, such was the case for the presidents of Amestris. All the time they had was stolen. And they didn’t think there was anything bad about it being that way.

“I would like that very much,” Riza said softly. And she really did hope she and Mustang could one day. Stolen time made every second of it all the more special.

Zinnia noticed now how Mustang held her hand, like it was the only thing in the world worth clinging on to.

“Is that wise?” he asked in jest. “Armstrong will throw me to the sea.”

“Count on it,” Olivier grumbled.

But she was … the contrary of tense. Hands in her pockets, she watched everything like a hawk, drinking in the energy of her family and the life she’d once wanted to have and had modelled to her liking. She was in her element now.

Zinnia would go back to this memory often, after the wedding. To the image of Olivier owning her past and honoring it as a way to enter the future without burdens. Even the way she looked at Mustang, like she saw him for the first time, because she’d just found out he had changed enough to be a different person. Just … not enough to _not _make his usual grandiose entrance and joke around.

A few minutes later, he patted Olivier’s back and muttered:

“Here come my _actual_ children.”

The only children Mustang would ever have: two blond brothers, accompanied by their respective girls. A memory, again, of old times and old hardships. But also old rewards. These children—now men—had been the only saviors of Amestris that hadn’t been recognized for it. The hidden heroes, the ones that had packed up to go home after leaving the hospital. Home, where everything had started.

It was the shortest of the two men that Mustang’s heart had learned to love first, when Edward Elric had been but a twelve-year-old with more rage in his body than it could actually contain. And now… he almost seemed to be someone else, smiling widely, peacefully, tucking a stray hair behind Winry’s ear and holding both his sons’ hands—blond boys with eyes like their mother.

“Raiden, Charlie,” Winry was saying, “We’re going to meet daddy’s friends now! Aren’t you excited?”

And the tallest Elric… Mustang almost didn’t recognize at first. The last time he had seen Alphonse Elric, the boy had been a pitiful thing, barely enough flesh in him to shield his bones from the breeze. Now he was a broad man with thick golden hair and a calm stance, like he had never once seen chaos, when he had been the one to suffer more at its core. He came with a Xingese woman of long thin black braids, barely half as tall as he was.

Mustang’s smile grew big and emotional. It had been over twenty years, and now here they all were, back together again. And for a good reason this time. No wars on the horizon, no maleficent plans to disrupt. Just a wedding of two people who loved each other.

He put a hand to Olivier’s shoulder. And she understood, because she was feeling the same way, that he was saying thank you for this reunion.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered to him, and immediately heard Riza laughing to herself.

“I wasn’t going to _cry,_” Mustang hissed back.

But he was, oh he was… Because, somehow, all the people he had ever loved past the point of discretion were here today, to celebrate and honor love and affection. All he could hope for was the photographers failing to capture his tears.

“If it isn’t the best of the Amestrian military…” Ed said as a hello to his old friends. “Colonel, Lieutenant, General…”

“Not anymore, kid,” Olivier corrected him.

“And it’s Co-President Mustang to you, Fullmetal,” Mustang said, managing somehow to not look _too _emotional.

“Old habits die hard, I guess.” Al chuckled.

His voice was nothing like that of the young boy once trapped inside a moving armor. He and his brother must be around forty years old now. Young, still. But men, never again boys. It hurt to think, then, that everything that had happened to them had been at such a young age. At least Olivier, Zinnia, Alex, Mustang, and Riza had been adults at the time. They’d known how to handle things much better than the kids, and yet the kids had been the ones to tie all loose ends.

“Thank you for inviting us, general,” Winry told her, shaking her hand firmly. “Your hospitality continues to be legendary.”

_Ah, that’s right, _Olivier thought. This had been the girl Kimblee had used as bait for Edward Elric, back in the day. Back in her fort. She looked at Zinnia, then, among all this people. The only reason Olivier had been hospitable then had been Zinnia and the example she had set, the example she regretting having made of her among the soldiers. And, ironically, she was glad for all of that, today.

“And this would be … the first woman soldier on Briggs…” Ed said, offering Zinnia his hand. He remembered, then. But how could he forget? Those days were etched forever in his memory. He had seen deaths and lives, trusted war secrets to rivals, and lost so much that it had taken him a long time to feel like he’d _gained _anything.

“Not really the first,” Zinnia replied.

“General Armstrong doesn’t count,” Al assured her. “She’s too skilled to be called just a soldier.”

A chorus of laughter took over them. Olivier might have retired from duty, but the memory of the years she’d served continued to live on, untiring, undying.

“Was your journey pleasant?” Zinnia asked the newcomers. Ed and Winry lived in Amestris still, in some southern town with green fields and tall trees, but Al and his girlfriend Mei had been almost untraceable. Mustang had given them their old address at Xing so they could send the invitation, but until today they hadn’t known if it had ever reached them.

“Just long,” Mei said, laughing a little. “We come all the way from the Selenic Strait. It was a few hours flying, the long way around. But totally worth it. Your story makes all the memories from the war a little less bittersweet.”

The mention of the war reaped silence and a gentle smile from Mei herself. It was nothing any of these people had ever run from, but it was a hard truth to come face to face with, even now.

“Your suit is _fantastic, _general,” Ed told Olivier, breaking the silence. He then realized that the people around him were all blonde and tall, richly dressed, too similar to her to not be… “Is this … your family?

She nodded.

“Is Major Armstrong around?” he asked, his eyes glimmering in anticipation for a second.

She smiled and pointed at a towering sobbing silhouette—she fondly wondered what he was crying about then. “Right there.”

“Thanks,” Ed said, a knot in his throat. Alex, too, had been part of the team that had put a stop to the end of the world. Like with Mustang, Ed and Al held him in high regards.

When before there had been idle chatter and politeness, now there was the pleasant noise of people rekindling. Olivier knew Alex had pulled Ed and Al into bear hugs without needing to see it, and Zinnia could tell that Mustang was crying even if he continued to deny he was. She basked in their humanity, in the feelings that were still there, after so long.

Then a hand tapped on her back, and she saw a face, brown like hers, barely above ten years old. One of her distant cousins’ children, no doubt. A pang of nostalgia invaded her. Since the funeral of her parents, years ago, she hadn’t seen her family. Her _father_’s, anyways. Her mother’s family had disappeared off the face of the earth when she had married a man of Ishvalan descent.

“Cousin Zinnia, would you come with us for a little while?” the child said. She had big red eyes and a tooth-gapped smile that tugged at Zinnia’s heartstrings. “We want to hear the story of you and your wife. The minister told us it’s fun!”

And fun, it was.

Zinnia took the child’s hand and looked for Olivier’s gaze in the crowd of blond and black heads. Olivier nodded with a smile. _Go, I’ll be here._

“I’ll go meet you in a while,” Olivier mouthed at her, urging her to walk away with that little cousin of hers. The child was adorable, truth be told, tiny and skinny like she was sure Zinnia had been at her age, and where they were going waited a pool of kids her age, excited about their cousin’s wedding but more excited even about her long dress.

Olivier had to admit, Zinnia looked very pretty in it. Like a fairy godmother in white, a few yellow flowers on her bouquet. She would be the delight of all those kids. Olivier was glad, then, for Alex’s desertion. Maybe none of those kids would have ever been born if he hadn’t made the right choice.

She was thinking she should tell him one of these days, although their relationship was better now than ever and didn’t require it anymore, when she saw something past the cameras of the photographers and people starting to leave, with the declining sun, towards the dining tables.

Some_one _she had not laid eyes on for … almost forty years.

Someone she had _found_, again, in a sporadic and fleeting stroke of luck barely ten years ago. In a handful of letters that only span a few months before that someone had had to leave to travel around the world, in countries far away and a botany book translated to twenty-seven languages.

Olivier’s heart would have stopped in her chest at the sight of her, if she’d been thirty years younger. Instead, it beat quick and joyful. And her feet started moving.

“I was passing by,” Ianthe told her first, without need for greetings or small talk, “and I heard the eldest daughter of Philip Gargantos Armstrong was getting married. Couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

Olivier’s throat was dry as the Desert Area, and how she managed to speak would always remain a foggy recollection in her mind. All she had energy to do was stare at Ianthe until she memorized her face again, anew. A different face for a different time in their lives.

“Back in Central?” she asked.

“For a few days,” Ianthe said. “I have a book signing. The National Library has bought a few of my volumes.”

“That’s… good.” More than that. It was—“Excellent, truthfully.”

Ianthe, then, had been scrawny and always covered in chlorophyll, long auburn hair curling on its own when it was humid outside.

Ianthe now was dressed in green loose pants and a violet blouse, and her hair was almost completely white, in a slapdash braid below her right ear. A botanist, self-made, well-travelled. A woman Olivier admired for her life journey and loved as she had loved forty-two years ago—just from a different part of her heart.

“You look well,” Ianthe said. “Almost unchanged. I pictured you as the Führer of Amestris by now. Power did always suit you.”

Olivier smiled softly and gave the answer she would not have expected to in the past. “I retired months ago.”

“Surprising,” Ianthe said. She gave out a small chuckle. “Never would have said.”

“What can I say,” Olivier sighed, “I learned from my mistakes. Some things are too valuable to ever let them go out of ambition.”

And, contrary to what Olivier had expected, Ianthe’s smile grew wider, gentler. “I knew you would, one day. And … I’m glad you have.”

For a second, all they could see was Grand Central, crowded and smelling of oil and smoke. A train awaited, Ianthe awaited Olivier’s reply. And what came was a lie that Ianthe had to believe, if she wanted to keep herself sane.

_I loved you, then, _Olivier’s blue sad eyes seemed to say. Eyes that had seen too much, eyes that now sought wonder and affection, not war. The eyes Ianthe remembered had only ever sought conflict, nothing else. Escapism in conflict.

_I know, _said Ianthe’s. _I loved you, too._

_Then why did you leave? _Olivier’s asked.

Ianthe sighed. _Because our paths were only meant to share a destination for a while. You were always going to be a lonesome soldier until you weren’t, and I was always going to fidget away into something new until I decided I wouldn’t anymore. It’s only luck and chance that we’ve seen each other again, after all this time._

After all that time… And what little difference time did make. Because Olivier now wanted more than anything to sit down somewhere and talk, say all the words she had never dared to write out loud, and tell her story. Just like Ianthe would tell her her own. Not in bits and pieces of paper anymore, but whole and aloud.

But not today.

Olivier cleared her throat.

“Where will you be going next?” she asked.

Ianthe shrugged. “I don’t know. My book tour ends in Central. Maybe Occioriens. I always did want to see the Kunos Islands and never really got a chance when I was studying at the mainland.”

“Chalybes is really nice this time of year.”

And Ianthe laughed loudly, like she used to. Like she didn’t care who heard as long as she dragged Olivier down to laughter hell with her. It almost worked. Olivier was too proud, she had forgotten that.

“I’m guessing that’s where you live.”

Olivier, stubborn enough to not want to give in to shame, nodded firmly. “Haling Cove.”

“Known for its anchovies and algae,” Ianthe said. “Maybe I will visit, some time. Collect some samples, rekindle old flames…”

She seemed to have said that mostly to herself. None of her old all-encompassing voice was to be found, now it was but a melody, played softly to soothe a baby that is not quite asleep yet. Perhaps she _had _meant it for Olivier to hear…

Then, she sighed, and grinned sadly at Olivier.

“I should get going now… Wouldn’t want to intrude more than I already have.”

Just like that, Ianthe had come, and just like that she would leave, like a mist or a cloud full of raindrops. Her presence left an impact, and many but one would forget her until the next time.

She started to walk away. Like many years ago she had walked away. And this time Olivier didn’t stay back there watching her.

She strode over quickly and grabbed her arm. “Stay for dinner at least. I insist.”

And with the eyes of a woman perhaps sadder than Olivier, at least now, Ianthe shook her head. Strands of white hair shone in the light of the sunset.

“Send my congratulations to the bride. She chose well.” Her sad green eyes met Olivier’s. Those were still the same, a lifetime after. They said—through them, _she _was saying what she hadn’t forty years ago. What Olivier had never been able to ask her to say, not even on a letter. “Goodbye, Olivier.”

And before she could take a full breath, Ianthe had gone.

Within the rest few heartbeats, Olivier managed a smile.

They had never had a goodbye. Maybe this wouldn’t be one either.

But … after so long, Olivier’s heart had had her closure.

_Goodbye, Ianthe._

Gently, the memories faded, and the image of Ianthe—older, smarter, newer—faded with them. It was 1940 again, the day of her wedding, and Olivier had places to be, people to greet, a wife to love and cherish. Till death did them part.

It didn’t take her long to find Zinnia again, lost in conversation with her cousins, sitting on the ground as she excitedly told them all about the greatest woman she had ever known, the greatest warrior on Amestrian soil.

“May I?” Olivier said, teasing, to get her out of the story for a second.

Zinnia glanced up at her, unaware until now of her presence, and grinned like the children in front of her.

“I’m telling our story.”

“I figured,” Olivier said. “I’m here to listen to it.”

She had never seen this before, Zinnia weaving stories with her vocal cords instead of her written words. One moment, she was beaming at the children, at _her, _and the next her face showed the intricacies behind telling a story and the emotions beneath every sound of it.

“… so she _ran _and _ran _after me, not caring at all about who saw or heard her pant, and when she reached me, she kissed me so beautifully I never wanted to leave her again…”

* * *

The crickets sang songs under the starlight that human ears were not meant to ever unravel into words. Everything that had been green about the day, each breadth of grass and tree leaf, was not dulled to a shade of dark blue. A few inches at a time were, though, illuminated by lamps hanging from ropes around tree branches, suddenly turned soft orange and yellow.

Dinner had been served a long while ago and rivers of beer had run on the wedding of the least propense drinker on the whole of Amestris. A few soldiers come from the north had, in fact, thanked her profusely, after, for such a treat. They hadn’t seen good beer in decades. But now the party was elsewhere, away from drink and food.

A minority of the guests now sat at their dinner seats, drinking the last of their beverages and stretching dessert until their stomachs would be able to process it. The rest of them danced in the grass, paired up innocently at the sound of music new and old as if the songs playing were whispering words meant for them only. They were, indeed, whispery songs, written for moments like this, under the stars and the moon and the _universe_. There had not been much room for partying loudly, only at the beginning, and only so that Olivier wouldn’t receive complaints from her old work colleagues about dull entertainment.

Right now, as she had been for the better part of the last few hours, she was in the arms of her wife, and they danced away, feet barely leaving the floor as they did. It was a dance that only pretended to be one.

“I think people are having fun,” Zinnia muttered, as close to her wife’s ear as she could reach. Her own ear was on Olivier’s shoulder, and she could hear her heart, beneath all that clothing and skin. A heart as melodious as the music.

“Everyone looks … happy.”

And so they did. Weddings were usually happy endeavors, unless there was a third party involved in that love story that felt they hadn’t gotten their fair share. And Olivier felt that Ianthe would never fit into that category. Whatever love Ianthe harbored for Olivier was not—and had never been—enough to put a stop to the next step in her life. She appreciated this now. It had given her Zinnia, in the long run.

And a family.

She glanced at Alex, whose chest was currently occupied by Bernard’s petite head. She wondered where Oliver was and if he was doing the same thing, somewhere in the dancing crowd tonight, pressing his ear close to someone’s heart, making his way in it, forever.

“Will we ever get used to it?” Zinnia asked, after a while.

Olivier hmphed.

“I mean…” Zinnia started. “This. Happiness. _Normalcy. _Not having anything to do, not having anything to lose.”

She asked it because Olivier wouldn’t. Some things were never meant to be discussed so honestly. And leaving the soldier life was one of them.

“I do have things to lose,” Olivier said, very serious. “If we haven’t been here before, it’s because I was too scared to lose them. I would have called you my wife long before now otherwise.”

Zinnia placed a quiet kiss onto Olivier’s shoulder.

“I’ve always been your wife,” she muttered. “Not before any gods, not before the government. But you and I ceased to be casual a long, long time ago.”

Olivier snorted.

“We’ve never been casual.”

“We were! For a few days, maybe. But we were. I distinctly remember a conversation—” Zinnia began to laugh. “—on top of the fort, in which you blushed when you asked me if this was just sex.”

“How can you even remember that?”

“Because it was so embarrassing I thought I’d have to live with the mortifying prospect of having heard that question forever.”

“You’re remembering it _wrong,_” Olivier complained. “I did not blush.”

“Oh, you did…” Zinnia said. “And I hid. Those were simpler times. I would not do that now.”

And Olivier did not hear anything but a challenge. She looked deep into Zinnia’s eyes, deeper than she usually did, and rummaged there for the exact emotional reaction she was looking for.

“Is this about sex now, Zinnia?”

“Sure,” she replied without batting an eye, “let’s get our clothes off in front of both our families. That’s a nice memory we want them to have of today.”

Olivier gave up, dropped her hand from Zinnia’s waist and hand and said:

“I’m going to get myself a glass of water, want anything?”

Zinnia shook her head and continued dancing on her own, eyes closed.

What a woman she’d married. Nobody else would have been able to fill the space she had been taken for years. Zinnia wasn’t just her wife, she was her best friend, she was her closest colleague, and the person she kept choosing to fall asleep next to. It had been many years now, and Olivier still was shocked at the strength of her feelings.

She almost over-spilled the water when she poured it while thinking about that. When she looked up to take a gulp, something moved in the horizon of her field of vision. Something tall and stealthy that, for some reason, wanted to be spotted. She followed it slowly, heart beating fast, out of the clearing of the wedding where people still drank and danced, oblivious to everything outside of it.

A balding man in his late fifties stared back at her, close to a hill that shaded a bit of moonlight from Olivier’s sight. He had red eyes—eyes that now wore no goggles to mask their color. Eyes that brought back a wave of memories and weakened, just for a moment, Olivier’s knees.

She said his name out loud with the longing of a woman with too many memories inside her. “Miles…”

“General,” he said, ever as loyal. “It has been … a long time.”

And how much time exactly, Olivier knew well. After 1915, Miles had stayed in Central at Mustang’s request and Olivier’s approval. The last time she’d seen him had been at the hospital and the last time she’d spoken with him had been on the phone. Back then, she’d often wondered what could have happened to him. With time, she’d had to learn to let him go. But that hadn’t made it hurt any less. Miles would always be a big part of who she was. That was why, when planning the wedding, she’d told Mustang to drop an invitation at the last address he had of him. She hadn’t really expected Miles to actually get it.

And yet here he was, a ghost from the past turned flesh again.

“A very long time, indeed,” she said.

He beamed for her and the lines on his face reminded her of someone else. Someone long gone.

“Where … where have you _been_?” she asked. “I lost track of you.”

“Ishval,” he replied, slowly. “All those years, it was always Ishval. I heard it is finally back to what it was once, before the civil war.”

“You’re not there anymore?”

He shook his head. “I left years ago.” His smile grew a little. “No one wanted to overwork the war hero.”

“I’m glad, no one should overwork you,” Olivier said. “And now? What is Major Miles up to these days?”

Miles chuckled.

“I paint now. It’s not much, but the military pension keeps me afloat these days. I don’t need anything more from life.”

The minister, earlier, had spoken of living austerely at Briggs. Olivier, now, couldn’t help but think that the only one who had ever known true austerity was Adil Taube, to whom she had given a new name after he had come to her fort and found out the hospitality he was receiving from hers he would never receive from Führer Bradley and his government. She had named him Miles. Because, in her own words then, he had come a long way.

She was immensely proud of him now, after so many years. He had truly come a long, long way, made a new life out of the ashes of the old one, and seemingly found some peace of mind after having lost everything he’d ever had.

“And you?” he asked her.

“I … retired from the line of duty,” she admitted, a bit self-conscious about it. Selfishly, she’d always wanted him to think the best of her, even when she didn’t deserve it. “Zinnia and I moved south.”

His chuckles resonated with life and joy.

“South? It is not like you, general.”

If only he knew just far _south _his ice-cold-hearted general had gone, he would laugh for a million years.

“You don’t have to call me that now, Miles,” Olivier said. “It’s been decades since I was your anything.”

“And yet you always will be.” His smile disappeared into a calm and somewhat sad expression.

The unspoken between them arose after many, many years. A story that had never been given a middle and an end—a story Olivier had never even acknowledged as even having a beginning.

“Are you happy in the south?” Miles asked after a few seconds. It was all he had even shown towards her, worry about her state of happiness. And the memory of it, turned reality once again when the rest of the world had changed so radically, made Olivier smile to herself.

“I am, yes.” She sighed. However transcendent that newfound happiness was, there were things in her old life that Olivier couldn’t forget overnight. “But, the truth is—and don’t tell Zinnia this—I miss home, Miles. The snowed-in mountains, the small towns, the fort—”

_And the people in it. My people._

“That’s where my heart will always belong,” she finished.

His lips curved once again, but this time the gesture was short-lived, sadder still. “Is this why you chose to get married here?” He asked it as if he had heard her last thought.

Here… Here, in the green heart of Amestris, where there was nothing for miles, really. Olivier had only been here once before, twenty-five years ago, and it had been a business much less happy than a wedding. Much harder to stomach, too.

Somewhere on these hills, a gravestone lay, forever impervious to time when the body beneath it had never been.

“He would have been the only one missing if I hadn’t,” she only said. And she knew he understood. “Austin, Thompson, Mauser… They’re all here somewhere, probably too drunk to know _where _they are and what day it is.” She exhaled in old disapproval that now couldn’t go anywhere. “Even _you_’re here.”

Miles sighed and directed his eyes at the horizon, as if he was looking for the grave. Maybe he was. Olivier wouldn’t have been able to say, his face looked ever so serene, as always. Even more so.

“He would have turned eighty-six this year,” Miles only said.

“Eighty-six?” Olivier said, taken aback. “Truly?”

Miles just nodded.

“He always struck me as such a young soul…” Olivier mumbled. “Even near—” She coughed. “—his end.”

“Do you ever miss him?” Miles asked.

“More often than not. I sometimes—I sometimes _wonder _about what he would say or do. I imagine him there, watching things happen, reacting like he always did.” She smiled a wet smile, and Miles noticed her eyes were teary. “Being _loud._”

“He would have liked to see you two marry.”

Olivier joined her hands behind her back and exhaled. How it hurt to speak in conditional sentences.

“I believe he would have, yes.”

For a few moments, they stood in silence, honoring the life of a great man who the world deserved to know as a war hero and a kind soul. Sometimes, Olivier forced herself to picture his face in her mind, so she wouldn’t forget it. Sometimes she feared she already had. Such was the curse of living on when others had fallen.

“Most of my paintings are of him,” Miles confessed solemnly. “I have found it a comforting way to heal.”

Olivier let out a dry chuckle. “I still can’t believe you paint.”

“Retirement leaves you with ample amounts of free time, general. Soon you will see.” And there it was again, the amusement in his eyes, forever clouded by something else, something bigger and more diluted. Memories. “Some of them are being permanently exhibited in Ishval’s Museum of Amestrian History as a tribute to victory, if you would like to see them sometime.”

“I would,” she said. “Thank you, Miles.”

“I like to think that it immortalizes him, somehow. Him and the fort.”

“You drew Briggs as well?”

Miles nodded.

“My largest painting so far. It took almost five years to complete, and by the time I was done … I felt it was all so _inaccurate_, as if my memory had tarnished it, somehow. But I needed a reminder of how immortal Briggs already is, however inaccurate my portrayal of it.” He swallowed. “It’s won a few awards. People hardly recognize it for what it is.” Miles smiled fondly. “They think it some recollection of the crudeness of a soldier’s life.”

After all, Briggs had always been thought of as some kind of brutal training ground.

“And what is it, really?” Olivier said, her voice barely a thread of sound.

“An ode to family. An ode to home.”

She must have looked shocked, because Miles rushed to add:

“You and I, general, our true homes reside in the same place, surrounded by snowed-in mountains and small towns, crowded with good men. But we have had to find other homes elsewhere. Other families.”

She smirked softly.

“Are you married, Miles?”

He shook his head. “No. No, I’m not.”

“Why?” she asked, ever finding questions where there were no real answers.

“In a few words, I guess I can simply say that I let Scar go.” Fondly, Miles smiled at the memory. And Olivier quietly tried to remember those tense days back in 1915 when the world had almost fallen apart and people had tried to reassemble its broken pieces. Miles and Scar, both from the same birthplace, both returning to it in the end to rebuild it, made more sense than she could have said with words. “He was always too free to find roots anywhere.”

“And there has never been anyone else?”

“No one else understood.”

_No, not everyone would have_, Olivier thought.

They waited there under the stars a long time after that, waiting for new words that sometimes came and sometimes didn’t, waiting for an eighty-six-year-old ghost to pay them a visit. Waiting for the night to end and reality to go on. Because, otherwise, they would have never left this green graveyard.

“I have to get back,” Olivier announced. “It’s about time I get the missus away from the dancefloor.” She glanced quickly at him, as if she feared he might disappear into thin air, just like he’d popped up. “She’d like to see you, too.”

“Sure, let’s go congratulate the other bride.”

Slowly, they made their way back. It didn’t take them long to find Zinnia, still dancing, now a little bit more drunk than before, the tail of her skirt spotted with dark dirt. She had joined hands with a sleepy Dalina and they kept swirling in turn with the music. They truly looked like aunt and niece, and something within Olivier’s heart lit up in the colors of the rainbow.

“Your granddaughter?” Miles asked.

“One of my sister’s.”

Dalina immediately ran to Olivier’s feet and hugged her knees.

“Auntie Oli,” she said, “mom said I can dance until we go!”

Olivier ruffled the kid’s already messy golden hair and leaned down.

“You’re not tired?”

The girl shook her head enthusiastically.

“Nuh-huh,” Zinnia pitched in, too. “We’ve been at it for a while, right, Dal?”

Dalina nodded effusively, then noticed the big tall man next to her aunt Olivier.

“Who is this, auntie?” she asked, peeping up at the man with deep curiosity, like only children ever could.

“This is a friend of mine,” Olivier answered patiently. “His name is Miles.”

Zinnia’s squeal was probably audible from a long distance. It would have frozen time. In a way, the sight of this man alone, before her after decades, was enough to.

“Miles!” She squealed again. “Oh, _Miles. _You made it? You got our invitation?”

“Sure did.” She immediately came to him, put her arms around him and almost tried to lift him from joy. Olivier realized then that this man hadn’t just been her friend to love and lose. “It’s really good to see you again, Zinnia.”

“How long have you been here? Why haven’t I _seen_ you?” she said to his neck, clinging to him a little drunkenly.

“Just got here,” he said, hesitatingly putting his arms around her.

Olivier picked up her great-niece from the floor and turned to her wife.

“We need to go, Zin. Long flight tomorrow.”

“But he just got here!” Zinnia finally let Miles go, and he visibly relaxed a little.

“Almost everyone else is gone.”

“Your family is still here,” Zinnia complained. “I think someone fell asleep…”

“It’s three am. We should all be asleep. _I _should be asleep.”

“But _Miles—_”

“Put me down, auntie Oli, I’m going to get sleepy if you hold me,” Dalina said.

“You don’t want me to carry you back?” Olivier said, doing what the girl had asked, anyway. “Tell your parents to take you home. Tell them I said so. Tell them _we’re _going home, too.”

It was the only way that Zinnia would stop twirling on the dance floor like a fairy in midair, getting everyone else to leave so she wouldn’t have anyone to dance with till dawn.

Maybe if the day after they hadn’t had booked tickets for the honeymoon, Olivier would have stayed all night long with her until the first lights of day. But, alas, things were what they were.

“Can we all go home together?” Dalina asked sheepishly.

“To the mansion?” Olivier looked at Zinnia.

“I don’t know, honey. You tell your parents,” Zinnia said to the girl. Olivier watched her great-niece run, then she put her arm around Zinnia’s waist, who said: “Miles, you come to the mansion too. You have to come to the mansion. We have so much to catch up on.” She kept leaning a little towards him when she spoke. “We can’t not see each other again!”

“He has an exhibition on Ishval, we could go see it, also go see your family there.” Olivier looked around. “They’ve already gone, have they?”

Only the Armstrongs remained, as well as a few other guests in Olivier’s peripheral vision.

“We really have to go home?”

Olivier nodded. “It’s time, baby. You’ll thank me tomorrow.”

“Okay, fine,” Zinnia said, sobering up slightly. She had always gotten more drunk on life than on booze, and Olivier found it so endearing, even now, when she was desperate to get into bed and rest from the exertion and craziness of the day. “Miles, can we drop you off anywhere?”

“It’s okay, I drove here.”

They all gathered near the cars. All the Armstrongs were already in their own, ready to drive into the night, and Miles barely stayed a second to say hi to them all. It was, however, enough time to note how _much_ they all resembled each other, even generations down the line, yet how different they all were from Olivier, the only Armstrong he had ever truly known. He then walked straight to his car, unable to ever say the final goodbye. With Olivier, he’d had several, and none had seemed to stick definitely. So why bother? With Olivier Armstrong, why bother doing anything else than buckling up for the ride?

He watched her for a second, before he stepped on the accelerator and drove off. She was focused now on carefully putting her very tired and tipsy wife in their car. It was a nice last image to have of her; it was, at her core, that deep caring of hers that Miles had always loved in silence.

When he was already too far gone to notice, Olivier looked back at the empty venue, at the hills underneath the dark sky, and breathed out slowly.

She was remembering a tall and big man with a permanent smile on his face, a brain made for maps and gossip, and a heart that had loved many more people than any other living soul ever could. She remembered him and hoped that, wherever he was—if he was truly anywhere—he would feel like a part of today. Because he was. He’d always be a part of her. A part of the fort she’d left behind and the people in it, the people who had left it years ago, too.

Inside the car, being driven away to Central, to the mansion, Olivier joined hands with Zinnia, whose head had slowly begun to lull against her shoulder, and kissed the crown of her head.

“Go to sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll carry you to bed when we get there.”

“Mmmmm, ‘kay…”

And Zinnia closed her eyes.

And Olivier breathed out, feeling the quiet in her heart and soul, feeling it seep into her, and knowing all was well. All was exactly as it was supposed to be.

Today, she and Zinnia were still newlyweds. Today, they were wives for the first time. Tomorrow, the world would go on turning and they would follow its turn, the way they had always followed each other; they would catch a plane that would take them somewhere far, past the Selenic Ocean … and beyond.

**Author's Note:**

> The songs that I kept listening to while writing this fic were: [By Your Side](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1aJzs7YUQ) by Mellah and [Love Me With All Your Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G34-glMLpGM) by Delilah Montagu, from the Moomin Valley soundtrack, and [How It Ends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfi1UQ_PKQI) by DeVotchKa.
> 
> The song that supposedly plays as Zinnia and Olivier walk down the aisle doesn’t exist (that I know of!), but I did base its nonexistent lyrics on a painting I mentioned in Chapter 54 of the main fic: [The Fisherman and the Syren](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leighton-The_Fisherman_and_the_Syren-c._1856-1858.jpg) by Frederick Leighton. It’s the painting Olivier and Zinnia talk about in the museum.
> 
> “The long way around” is a recurrent phrase in Doctor Who’s episodes while talking about how the Doctor didn’t steal his TARDIS but borrowed it, because he still means to go back to Gallifrey one day and return it. He always says he’s getting there. I’m very, very fond of that phrase, so here it goes!
> 
> “All was well” is the last line to the _Harry Potter_ series by J.K. Rowling, a reference I could not resist. 
> 
> The wedding ceremony is partially copied and pasted from a Wikipedia article about weddings and [this site](https://www.weddingchicks.com/blog/sample-wedding-ceremony-scripts-youll-want-to-borrow-l-16537-l-41.html). Of course, although the borrowed structures come from a religious template, in this story the wedding isn’t really following any religion at all. 
> 
> And... as a goodbye, since I guess this _is_ my final goodbye to Adversity, I would like to quote Doctor Who again, as I think it does kind of apply here <strike>(yes, this is me trying to cope with the ending of this story)</strike>: “Things end. That's all. Everything ends and it's always sad, but everything begins again, too. And that's always happy. Be happy.” 
> 
> I'm going to try to be, but I'm honestly going to miss this story and the people that have existed in it so, so much... <3


End file.
